Just don’t invite people using the addon and don’t use the addon.
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My understanding is that this is just a UI for interpreting the LookingForMore or LookingForGroup channels, no?
Or a custom, named channel specific to this Addon. You could likely even post to that channel without the Addon and still be picked up, if you formatted your chat correctly.
I think the response to this Addon is pretty deep, and I’m sure a lot of people have some strong feelings on the subject. I just don’t get the negativity and the lack of professionalism in this thread.
Every single person who played meaningfully in Vanilla WoW is an adult today. Every one of you. Show some respect for others and their opinions or you’ll never be able to communicate.
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Go ahead, ban it. You know what will happen next? RaiderFinder and other external tools will pop up. Sorry, this isn’t 2005 and you can’t roll back technology. I’d rather have this addon than have to register for a third party service. As long as this isn’t teleporting me to a dungeon, auto finding my party members - I’ll live with it.
Yes. Looking for specific code to block that code. You don’t need to kill the API.
You can prevent whatever you’d like, technically. Just like how antivirus allows normal applications to run but will quarantine malicious, known code - even if you are the one that executed it.
I think you think this is all a lot harder than it actually is. You stop the addon by looking for code for the addon, not anything else that uses the same API.
This isn’t rocket science. You’d be surprised at how often it’s done in games to detect and prevent 3rd party software, let alone addons that actually have to be located in the host application’s data folders AS WELL as loaded into memory BY the application, itself. In WoW’s case that’s unfettered access to look for and do whatever it wants to its own folders and what it loads into memory.
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Which code exactly are you looking for? If it is the command to pull info from the API… that just breaks loads of mods. Otherwise you’re just saying “block the name or order of commands that we think are the signature of program X” which is just a blacklist that can be beaten with renaming.
If you’re going to allow add-on X use the chat API in a few select ways, but want to prevent another add-on from using the same chat API with the same function calls but for a different end-user purpose, you’re left with blacklisting, which won’t be patched fast enough.
This is silly.
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You can look for anything. Th entire structure as a first-case, see what functions and methods that specific add-on uses in that specific combination.
From what we actually see from the add-on in use from recent videos, I’d be shocked if I wasn’t able to look for and find the right combination of APIs that a SINGLE addon uses to replicate that behavior, purely from reverse engineering. And, as of now, since this is the only add-on that does what we have seen - it would be easy to pick out from the crowd.
Barring reverse engineering it’s structure which, again, is a very specific combination (watch the videos) - you can look at the exact code for a direct match, line by line since - as I’ve already stated - if it were to be in use globally and by enough people to make it worthwhile - it would have to be public so the masses can engage with it.
That means Blizz would literally have the entire structure of how it’s written to match.
None of this is hard or should be shocking.
I program games. It’s my bag. This is easy mode unless it’s a zero-day hack that hasn’t quite made the rounds yet. Then I’d probably need a cup of coffee and some help to get it taken care of quickly. What we are dealing with here has to hook into Blizz’s API with a specific set of instructions to function as it does. That’s super easy to find, even without the code 
Believe me, if they want it dead it will be dead without affecting anything else.
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See this is how I know you’re puffing, because Blizzard has barely been able to keep up with the most egregious of exploits, barred add-ons, etc, in the lifetime of just WoW. Blizzard’s solution is almost always to find a way to first just break access to the API or remove the function entirely because that resolves the matter best. But chat add-ons have been a staple of Vanilla from the beginning, as well as UI reskins and pulling raw data from a variety of locations. So to ban THIS one in particular would require them to, as I already said, find the unique thing they think is an integral part of the code as a signature and single it out hoping nothing else is caught in the cross-fire. For this add-on in particular, every single function exists singularly at a minimum in other add-ons in some way, and some add-ons combine several into their UI package to smooth out use of them all (like the old Titan bar).
Even if Blizzard mirrored the add-on package into their banhammer program to nail anyone with it immediately after every update… they simply wouldn’t keep up with it fast enough. Shutting down the HonorBuddy nonsense took months and more sophisticated programmers still managed to evade problems well after it became well known (and it existed for years before anyone took any action as well).
If you don’t think Blizzard can block something from running inside their game if they want to, I’m not sure what you’re smoking.
It all depends on whether or not they want to.
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There isn’t a “block {ClassicLFG}” command. If they wanna break it, they’ll have to break specific access to some API commands (which will break other add-ons either partially or completely) or fruitlessly seek out some defining line of code to treat as a signature for finding the add-on… which can simply be changed by updating the add-on with a new junk code and filler.
The anti-virus analogy that was provided to you was a very good one. I suggest you try to understand that before continuing to spout out what they can or can’t do without understanding.
Do you think an anti-virus has to block malware by it’s name? Do you think it has to block every other program that has access to the same functionality that it does?
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Not any of those like Call to Arms auto invited members. Sorry to burst your main and only viable point.
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You’re living in dreamland if you think Blizzard cannot do something because you think they must break other funtions to break this addon.
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like holy cow, if you want LFG then play BFA. Don’t bring your casual attitude to Classic.
#notwelcome
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When I say “signature” I don’t mean just the name. The code itself has internal naming conventions, commands of all kinds that are interchangeable with others, and loads and loads of junk that ultimately does nothing (if a programmer so chooses).
Bad anti-virus looks for naming only. But most anti-virus simply has a massive blacklist of commands that won’t be allowed without specific user input. The trick is finding commands that are regularly allowed in conjunction with other, usually benign, commands so that changes can be made without detection. The easy, but horrendously cumbersome method, of dealing with that is to bind up one or more of those commands with warnings and prompts… but for things like Windows, you dramatically bog down user interaction.
There’s a reason known exploits, bad add-ons, spammers, gold sellers, etc etc pop up time and time again after every patch on retail since Beta. Chalking it up purely to “Blizzard doesn’t want to” is just asinine.
I’m curious to know what functions you think this add-on is particularly exploiting that no other add-on is…
I’m curious as to your game code programming experiance?
So you don’t know…
They can’t just ban the addon. They have to break functions in game that the addon utilizes. Otherwise you could just keep creating the addon with a different name and it would still work
Where is your proof?
Provide a Blizzard quote stating that they cannot break this add-on without breaking other things to substantiate your claim.
You wouldn’t be deliberately dishonest to try to support your desire, would you?
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Is there an official, global LFG channel in Classic? Something folks are default joined to when they log in, like Trade in the cities?
Are there any global default channels in Classic?
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